Optics has been in the headlines this year due to the UN-sponsored International Year of Light 2015 (IYL 2015), and due to its presence in the 2014 Nobel Prize awards. The purpose of this article is to highlight the innovation-enabling elements that were behind the work of one of the Nobel Laureates - and the stream of innovations that followed, beyond the Nobel work. I will further, from this and my personal experience, expand some thoughts on the enabling elements of academic innovation and draw some conclusions - and, in particular, try and answer the question “How can academic success be repeated?”